Okay I know you’re going to say that I am being unfair because I’m comparing the latest and greatest from HTC against an iPhone that is two years old. That may be true, but I don’t have a 3GS or an iPhone 4 and the things that persuaded me to switch to an Android phone are likely to apply to the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4.
First, let’s look at the things that the EVO (and Android) do right:
- Contact birthdays go straight onto my calendar as an all day event! This doesn’t happen on the iPhone and it drove me absolutely nuts. It’s a completely OBVIOUS no-brainer. I wanted to write an app that would help fix this on the iPhone but the restricted API for the iPhone made this impossible without jailbreaking. As such, this made me not want to develop for it at all.
- Widgets! My next calendar event is right there on my home screen grouped with the local time and the local weather. Those are based off GPS. I can add widgets for photo albums, speed dial, clocks, hardware toggle switches (WiFi, bluetooth, etc), stock tickers, etc. Any app can provide widget capabilities.
- Full bluetooth functionality. I can now transfer files to and from my phone. I have heard the iPhone 4 follows the full bluetooth standard but I can’t be sure. Finally I can sync my phone contacts with the caller ID on my in-dash GPS unit.
- Micro SDHC card. I really believe that Apple forces people to replace completely functional hardware by limiting storage options. Forced obsolescence is very counter to their ads of being the most “green” electronics manufacturer.
- “Conversations” in the email client. All messages can be grouped together by subject. In fact, on the Android mail client you can sort your email just about any way you’d like it.
- Facebook Integration. I think Facebook is the devil and I joined it strictly to keep up with family. All my sister-in-laws are on there posting the latest news with their family. When I signed in it automatically imported calendar events from Facebook into my phone. It even added contact numbers, profile photos and email addresses that I didn’t have in my address book. I thought that was pretty slick. Best of all, you can turn it off.
- The battery app. Best utility app I have ever seen. The OS actually keeps track of what software applications, hardware functionality, and OS functionality is draining your battery. For instance, I found that on a single charge of the battery the display uses about 4% of my battery while idle cell tower communication used about 50%.
- Speaking of batteries… you can replace your Evo battery any time you want! Batteries only have a limited useful life before their capacity diminishes. I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve been flying all day and dying to listen to music on my iPhone only to think (no I have to save the battery so that I can contact my ride when I get to the airport).
- The ability to send meeting requests
- Text messages are automatically resent when they fail
- Notification bar shows you not only what apps are running but when you have an email, text, or other (app) message to review. Pulling the bar down shows all your notifications and allows you to clear them.
Things that the iPhone does better:
- The App store for the iPhone has a much easier layout. It’s a lot easier to navigate the droves of apps.
- The ability to disable http requests from emails (though this also annoys me because if you turn it off, you can’t turn it on for a specific email).
- Its easier to delete emails
- There are a lot more high quality games for the iPhone (and I do not believe this is because the iPhone is better for games, it’s just more mature in this respect, and of course the app store is easier to use).
Things that drove me nuts about my iPhone:
- Functionality is intentionally withheld from older models to encourage people to upgrade. Examples:
- the iPhone 3G is perfectly capable of tethering but you had to get a 3GS to tether (not that AT&T would ever let you do that).
- the iPhone 3G is perfectly capable of recording video but you have to jailbreak the phone to get such capabilities. I’ve done it before and I thought the video looked quite good for a cell phone.
- Multitasking (and iPhone OS 4.0) requires a 3GS or an iPhone 4. Multitasking has been available since day one on jailbroken iPhone 2G’s (iPhone 1). The phone is perfectly capable of this.
- Apple’s arbitrary restrictions on what apps can be developed for the phone. I wanted so badly to improve the functionality of the phone but every single innovative idea I came up with was shot down by Apple’s API or their policies about 3rd party apps.
- If it’s not a game and Apple didn’t develop it, the application probably sucks! Most of the Apple apps were useful and decently polished but if they’re missing functionality you’re out of luck. No one will be authorized to make an app that competes with theirs.
- Text messaging! If a message fails it fails silently. At first they didn’t even tell you until you opened the message thread. Now at least it says “failed to send” if you look in the texting app. Otherwise you have NO idea and it does not try to resend the message.
- Vendor lock-in. Apple is doing everything to lock you into the iPhone and to monetize it. They collect money from app sales, all possible music sales, and now they’re even trying to become the de facto ad agency for the iPhone. Once you buy an app or a song from Apple, they don’t want you to be able to use it anywhere else. They don’t want their developers to be able to develop anywhere else and they use license restrictions and a proprietary development language to do so (Objective-C is owned by Apple and was relatively unheard of before the iPhone).
So far the only thing that drives me nuts on the Evo is the app store. (Oh yeah, why can’t I sort my contacts by last name?) The faster processor is a godsend. Its amazing to open an app instantly, to have the keyboard be responsive when it’s looking in the dictionary, etc. Obviously the Evo’s processor is about twice as fast as the 3G, so this isn’t a fair comparison.
Here are some long term issues I had with my iPhone as well. Obviously I haven’t had my EVO long enough for anything to crop up
- Receiving text message alerts constantly without so much as an unread text (every 5 minutes for hours, sometimes).
- Receiving text messages without so much as an alert. The screen never lit up, no chime, no buzzer, nothing. I look at my phone hours later and see a ton of texts on the lock screen.
- Having the iPod randomly fast forward music when I’m using my headphones. This never happened when it was plugged in through the USB (and yes this is with the screen locked). Nothing I tried fixed this, including restarting the phone.
- Having my phone hang in various OS screens for the longest time (lockscreen not turning off/on, taking 2 or 3 minutes for it to finish the unlock after I swipe my finger, etc).
I’ve tried to be as unbiased as possible and provide the straight facts opinions as I see them. I’ll probably add more as I think of things. I’m definitely more of a power user so some of these iPhone complaints will not apply to everyone.